IT'S amazing how much a Challenge Cup run can lift a club.

The mood inside the Giants camp has been positive from day one, but right now it's better than ever.

The reason for that is clear.

It's down to the fact we've just beaten top French club Pia and have been handed another good home draw against Doncaster Dragons a week on Sunday, with a place in the quarter-finals at stake.

We know we can't afford to get too carried away at this stage, but we really couldn't have hoped for anything better.

Yet I have to admit the mood was good even before the draw had been made.

Overall, we were well satisfied with our efforts against Pia and we were glad to get them out of the way in what in the end was a relatively comfortable victory.

So I feel I must express my disappointment at the way the win was received in some quarters.

It appears that rather than applauding our side for scoring 10 fantastic tries, there was some miscontent over the team's goalkicking exploits.

If it had been a close game and Brandon Costin was missing kicks from in front of the posts, I would have shared that concern.

But given the nature of the contest, I didn't think the goalkicking was that big an issue.

I accept that Brandon has yet to find his greatest accuracy - accuracy that enabled him to kick some high-pressure goals in Super League when I was last at the Giants in 2001.

It is, after all, very early in the season and I do have other goalkicking options up my sleeve, including Paul March who landed some of the second-half goals.

So at the end of Sunday's match I expected everyone to have gone home feeling positive and reflecting on what was a very good win at this stage of our season.

I expected them to be reflecting on the quality of our tries against good French opposition, or the outstanding performance of Marcus St Hilaire or the fact that Darren Turner produced one of his best performances for several years. The yards Rocky made from dummy half tore Pia apart.

No-one seemed to give us credit for playing the way we did in what was only our second competitive match together.

In my opinion, to have scored a total of 15 tries in two matches at this level is a remarkable achievement.

We managed five against Castleford, and then doubled that against one of the best French sides I've ever seen.

I acknowledge the French League falls some way short of Super League, but they are battle- hardened after completing half their domestic season and stand a good chance of taking the title.

Along the way they have flogged a UTC side that beat Hull KR in round three and then came desperately close to winning at Castleford in round four.

Only last month they beat UTC 44-26, and some of that attacking flair was evident in their performance against us.

Yet when it came to the crunch we were in a totally different class to them.

Ok, we did concede three relatively soft tries which were down to lapses in concentration that I don't expect to see repeated again.

But Pia did have to score them on the fringes and they were conceded when we had switched off, which I admit was unforgiveable.

The reason for that is that we had scored two tries inside six minutes and were cruising.

We switched off after that, and then found it difficult to switch back on.

And when you're facing a Pia side that have players of the quality of former Kangaroo Jim Serdaris and excellent Australian playmaker Craig Field in their ranks that can cause problems.

However, once we got back into our stride we showed our killer instinct and rattled up a good half-century of points.

I was pleased with their efforts, it's just a shame others didn't share that view.